This case just shows how utterly silly copyright law is. Once you own a copy of a copyrighted work, you should be able to process it for personal use in whatever way you want. That includes format-shifting, backing up, remixing (for personal use), etc. But I suppose then the record labels couldn't then sell you the same content over and over for each of your devices.

Now we just need AutoScan, buy a book and get a DRM-free digital version at the same time and AutoRip for Movies which gives you a DRM-free digital copy with no expiry dates. I wish these copyright companies would realize that convenience is a large part of the puzzle.

This case just shows how utterly silly copyright law is. Once you own a copy of a copyrighted work, you should be able to process it for personal use in whatever way you want. That includes format-shifting, backing up, remixing (for personal use), etc. But I suppose then the record labels couldn't then sell you the same content over and over for each of your devices.

The really silly part is that you can do all those things in a really inefficient way, but you can't outsource a company to do those things for you in an efficient way. Even if the result is the same.

I wish there was a similar thing for books, movies and TV shows. But we all know how backward those industries are even when compared to the music industry. It's still nigh-on impossible to obtain DRM-free movies or books, so I'm still on the inefficient method of cracking Blu-rays with AnyDVD just so I can convert them to a mobile format or stream them across the network.

And no, a streaming service is not the answer since I want to own the stuff I pay for.

The difference between those two efforts is that Robertson is a self-promoting jackass hack who never seemed to have much of a business plan back in his MP3.com days beyond "I'm revolutionary! Give me money!" while Amazon is an actual, working money-making behemoth. The labels had no reason to give him the time of day. Amazon, on the other hand...

Robertson believes that if the labels had embraced his user-friendly approach in 1999, it could have slowed the decline of the CD.

This. Everything the music industry has done in the past decade seems like it's designed to prolong a dying business model at all costs, as if digital music wouldn't hurt CD sales if the industry would just try harder. Maybe they'd have less to complain about if they embraced progress rather than fight it every step of the way.

The difference between those two efforts is that Robertson is a self-promoting jackass hack who never seemed to have much of a business plan back in his MP3.com days beyond "I'm revolutionary! Give me money!" while Amazon is an actual, working money-making behemoth. The labels had no reason to give him the time of day. Amazon, on the other hand...

That may be true, but it is also true that both MP3.com and Amazon's basic premise is fundamentally the same. Being an ass should not have disqualified his innovation. I thought we as a society praised and rewarded good innovation, but yet more often than not we shun it and even punish those who come up with the idea. People grew too comfortable with the status quo and opportunities were lost.

I wouldn't call it a "sea change." I'd call it, Amazon has way more money to offer them than some random dude trying to start a website in 1999.

The thing is, MP3.com or Amazon shouldn't have to pay anything to rip a legally-purchased CD. It sounds like Amazon is bribing the labels to allow something that should have been allowed already.

I edited my post to be more explicit about what I was implying.

I agree with you 100%, I was just countering the author's assertions that the RIAA suddenly is having a change of heart. There's no change of heart, it's all about how much money they can get, and they're finally getting a lot of it.

Look at this way... if MP3.com amounted to 20% of actual sales and not an increase, then he would have probably got his way. The fact he accounted for zero sales at the time is the only reason he was shut out. Don't blame the labels, blame wal-mart, tower, and the others who insisted on the status quo. Now that that Apple, Amazon account for most of the sales, it's no wonder they get their way. Nothings changed...

I don't get why the Labels / Big Media refuses to sell me lossless audio without the CD.

I'd probably pay nearly the same price for it, and they save money on packaging, distribution, and production.

I don't want lossy formats - not because I can tell the difference, but because of generational loss from re-encodes.

I wonder if Steve were still alive, would we see ALAC on iTunes soon? I have read articles saying that he was working with Willy Nelson (among other artists) to put out higher frequency files and I assume that would've led to lossless as well...

Well there sort of is for movies. Sony have ultraviolet, the idea being you can buy a movie in a shop and you can then get access to it on any device via streaming or download. It is very much DRM full and the sign up was a pain (not least because I had to sign up twice, once for ultraviolet and once for the flixstr app to actually play the movies). To top it off I've yet to be able to get it to actually play a movie on my nexus 7.

In short they are slowly heading in the right direction but they need to do much better.

Great to see this man in an interview and to know some history but one thing has always puzzled me about mp3.com

After the lawsuit failed, Mp3.com got sold, and ... then it vanished. But.... it wasn't just full of 'pirated content'. It was full of content that users had created - years worth, probably tens of thousands of songs. A lot of them were quite good. There were classical musicians who had uploaded performances that there was no question of copyright about - nobody can copyright Beethoven songs from 1805. Then there were playlists and so forth and so on. All of it simply vanished into thin air. It was simply poof.

It was a bit devastating. The idea that someone would just completely obliterate years of work of tens of thousands of people in the blink of an eye, it just seemed like .... it seemed obscene. It seemed like someone would buy the Louvre and just make a parking lot and melt the sculptures down for light poles. It made no sense.

All of the people who created sites like Bandcamp have proven that there was a business model there and it could have worked. I guess in the long run, there will always be art no matter what, because we will always be human beings. But it still hurt to see that humanity just trampled on like a piece of trash in the street and destroyed like it was nothing.

I get the feeling that the recording industry hasn't embraced better forms of distribution because it just might make the status quo system irrelevant. Instead, they fight what "makes sense" as long as possible. I just wonder how much more successful (profitable) they would be today had they actually figured out a system that people actually found practical and useful.

dbright: I believe the problem is a lot of these sites try to challenge the business model on one front alone, distribution. On the production side of things no one has ever put up enough money to actually acquire real talent then pay the $100K+ to record their music, and double that to promote it. And at the same time promise to do that for not just one album, but the rest of their careers. So these sites in a sense are looking for a technological solution to a problem that doesn't really exist anymore, any teenager can get on Youtube and get heard. So instead of competing against the labels business model directly, they end up competing against Google's and that's never going to end up pretty.

I can't remember since it's been so long ago, but I believe 1999 was the last year I bought a cd, Sam Goody or Musicland anyone? This could be due to the fact that I realized I was paying some times up to $20 for one cd with 13 songs, and only 3 of them were worth listening to. My eyes were opened up to the world of Napster and other sources of digital media.

It's a shame that the music industry waited so long, one could say too long and that they caused themselves irreparable harm. Now there are groups of people out there that won't even pay $1 for a digital download when they can get it free from a friend or online. There is always going to be those groups, but the music industry didn't do anything to help shrink its size. Instead they continued to pour gasoline on the fire while telling the fire department it's just a false alarm.

I think if I was given the option to buy a cd and get a free digital copy back in 1999, I would probably still be adding to my collection of cd's. Now they just sit in storage or in my car.

Funny how something that is deemed "illegal" is legal 10-13 years later, without much change in copyright. Means the labels gave up the fight to pay the lawyers or finally took off their blinders and realized its a service people want. But they went the route to treat everyone as pirates. Remix discs and Napster had a huge impact, but it simply was the technological advancement and they refused to adapt.

First thing I did in 1999 when I bought a CD was to rip it to MP3. A mp3.com service would have been a great incentive to buy from that store.

They had to power and money to dictate how their product was used sadly.

It correlates with the Steve Jobs story of how the iTunes music store came into being. The argument that convinced the labels? That the Mac's low marketshare (under 5% at the time in 2003) was a GOOD thing.

Yes, somehow ignoring a huge market (PCs running Windows - more than 90%) was a good thing to the music labels.

I have found, with most people I know, that now music is so easy to purchase online that very very few pirate it. Movies, on the other hand, being so difficult to conveniently acquire legally in a format you like are pirated fast and furious. One would think at some point the studios would realize this and give over sooner while they can make more money rather than later after so much damage has been done.

No, that's not irony. It's misuse of a service that may have been poorly designed in some areas. You do not have access to "legitimate" MP3s if you have disposed of the CDs. You may want to re-read that fine print.

Of course, it's up to you whether you feel comfortable admitting to a breach of copyright laws on the Ars Technica forum.

Edit: And of course, what you have just pointed out is one of the reasons why it took 14 years for this to go legit.

“The MP3 only has 5 percent of the data present in the original recording. … The convenience of the digital age has forced people to choose between quality and convenience, but they shouldn’t have to make that choice.” - Neil Young

The labels, being the greedy bastards they were (and still are) wanted you to keep buying the same music over and over again. For example, once on vinyl, then again on CD then again on MP3.

Don't give them so much credit. They didn't even accept the idea of "again on MP3" until pretty recently. Remember, major-label music was not legally available for download in DRM-free formats until mid-2007. And if you want lossless, your only legal option, I think, is the overpriced, region-restricted site HDTracks, which the majors only release music through in dribs and drabs. If you need anything else, either stream it (with all the restrictions that entails) or re-buy it on CD (not secondhand, either), and rip it yourself...but wait, the RIAA won't even give a straight answer when directly asked whether CD ripping is (or should be) legal. All they will say is "we haven't sued anybody for that yet."

The difference between those two efforts is that Robertson is a self-promoting jackass hack who never seemed to have much of a business plan back in his MP3.com days beyond "I'm revolutionary! Give me money!" while Amazon is an actual, working money-making behemoth.

This is hilarious. You realize that Amazon took 6 years to even turn an operating profit right?